The Importance of Marxist Dialectical Amalysis and the Building of Chinese Socialism

The following text is my considered (albeit ‘brief’) response to this post summerising a recent lecture held at the Communist University of South London. I quote a recent (translated) Chinese text of a speech delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping about the CPC’s ‘certain’ attitude that ‘Socialism’ is being built in China (without a shadow of a doubt). The content of this lecture can be read here: Rediscovering Economics

Thank you Comrades! Constructive, dialectical debate is crucial for developing the mind and assessing and analysing material history. My view is that although a certain ideological direction should be maintained (to avoid revisionism and Trotskyism, etc), nevertheless, the mind must be exercised (in all directions) to decide appropriate action in the physical world (which is the progressive premise of the Communist University of South London). This is because the mind is conditioned by material events, and needs to fully cognise those events to remedy the inverted thinking associated with the Bourgeois State (which would have us at each other’s throats, whilst residing in a religious haze). Of course, Marx fully recognised that ‘consciousness’ and ‘matter’ are two-sides of the same dialectical coin (as did Lenin, Stalin and Mao, etc), and that material economics are inherently linked to the internal thought patterns such socio-economic policies produce in the mind. It may be that Marxist economics cannot be fully divorced from the human mind that a) observes the material world, and b) which formulates behavioural responses to that material world. Whatever the case, the Communist Party of China (CPC) does not doubt that it is ‘building Socialism’. This is my recent English translation of an official CPC Chinese language text that conveys a speech by General Secretary Xi Jinping and entitled: Be Vigilant Against Those who Denigrate Chinese Communism a short but poignant extract reads:

‘Prior to Marx, economists and sociologists were steeped in idealistic thinking, and defined ‘normal society’ from the perspective of pure fantasy. Marx abandoned this fictitious ‘generalised notion of society’, and instead dedicated himself to the study of the material conditions of existential capitalist society. In his ‘Das Kapital’ (Preface to the first edition – Volume 1) he states: ‘I want to study in this book, the capitalist mode of production, the relations of production, relations of exchange, and how these forces interact and transform one another.’ ‘The ultimate goal of this book is to reveal the economic law of motion within modern society.’ (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 5, p. 8, 10) Marx devoted his entire life to the study of capitalism, a developmental process that was the basis for his writing of ‘Das Kapital’. He studied a literal mountain of material evidence, and analysed in considerable detail, the functionality of the law of capitalism. As Lenin pointed out, Marx reveals the development of capitalism in the law, his analysis ‘Is limited to production relations between members of society’, and ‘Marx did not use any of these relations of production factors, for anything other than to illustrate the problem.’ (Collected Works of Lenin topic · On dialectical and historical materialism, page 162). With this study, Marx thoroughly clarified the relationship between capital and labour, and reveals the fundamental contradiction that exists within capitalism.’